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David: Thanks much for the link, I enjoyed the videos--but they raise a question I wanted to ask earlier: why are you so in love with sutemi waza? In some recent post you said it should be some large part of your training -- 50% or something like that -- a lot anyway. Why? I regard sutemi waza as essentially a Hail Mary pass--good to have in your back pocket for when you're desperate, but surely not something you really want to use? What's up with that?

David: Thanks much for the link, I enjoyed the videos--but they raise a question I wanted to ask earlier: why are you so in love with sutemi waza? In some recent post you said it should be some large part of your training -- 50% or something like that -- a lot anyway. Why? I regard sutemi waza as essentially a Hail Mary pass--good to have in your back pocket for when you're desperate, but surely not something you really want to use? What's up with that?

Out of interest any other styles teach sutemi waza other than Yoseikan?

The last step in the basic Iwama-style kaeshiwaza against shihonage is a sutemi waza.

There is also a sutemi waza as counter to iriminage, very nice.

Thanks Peter,
I am aware of those kaishi waza in Iwama lineage. Would you cinsider the kokyu nage's which involve going down onto one knee as sutemi waza? (although i realise you don't really sacrifice your centre per se)
Keith

Yes, the very latest reversal in terms of timing. I have the impression that this is considered to be the tactic of last resort..

As Peter said, for obvious reasons.

I've seen a number of ASU teachers teach them at various times, also generally as a kaeshiwaza of last resort. Most recently, Ledyard Sensei filmed his class on the subject, but I don't know if the video is available yet. They are not a formal part of the ASU curriculum, though, in that they do not appear in the test requirements.

These are not really sutemi throws. They are not truly sacrificial and the results are very watered down, mild movements. As was shown on several of the videos-options included going down on your back/butt and also down on one knee. Okay
I would strongly suggest that people truly interested in sutemi waza -and why they used to be so dramatically effective- consider alternatives to what was shown here.

1. When going down on your butt:
Try to get them to rise first
Then drop vertically down DO NOT PULL AWAY AND DOWN
Try doing this toward their feet and not by pulling away
This will get them to launch over you and lose their feet

2. When dropping to a knee:
This is best done by the leg closest to them dropping vertically down toward uke while you cut with your arm to whatever you are connected to. Some are done with the outside leg dropping though.
Best angles are 90 deg to their sides or a 45 deg.

Another alternative (gokui of several koryu) is to connect (say in a guillotine choke). There is a neck break version I won't go into here, but you can do it with a typical airway choke and throw your self underneath them in a sharp horizontal sutemi rotation. This cranks them and force them into a horizontal spin and whips them off their feet. You both fall and it is easy to maintain the choke.
There many versions of destroy shoulder or elbow that can be done very safely, even allowing roll outs from sutemi.
I just don't consider what was shown in those videos as really a sutemi. It is highly watered down-in an ill understood attempt to make them safe. Destroying the quality of a throw with hundreds of years of history due to a lack of understanding what of; what they were, how you did them, and how it was actually easy to make them safe, until you arrived at a barely useful, and highly cooperative drill is probably not the best approach.
Dan

In Tomiki's Aikido some sutemi waza are used in randori, not as a counter to a technique but mostly as an attacking technique to a moving opponent. It is very hard to do a sutemi waza on a very stable opponent. In competition it is not allowed to use sutemi waza, but in the dojo it is great fun to throw someone with sutemi waza.
Around 5:30 there is a sutemi waza : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr7zLwiWhdg

Out of interest any other styles teach sutemi waza other than Yoseikan?

Kanai sensei taught sutemi waza (I think it was his judo roots showing a little, he also showed chokes more often than most). This has continued with his students and all my teachers teach sutemi on occasion. A couple of the throws are taught often enough that I would consider them basic movements of the "style".

Kani-basami is now banned from regular judo competition, since Sumio Endo broke Yasuhiro Yamashita's fibula with it in the 1980 All Japan Judo Championship. Video of that match can be seen here: http://www.judovision.org/?p=1263

Kani-basami is now banned from regular judo competition, since Sumio Endo broke Yasuhiro Yamashita's fibula with it in the 1980 All Japan Judo Championship. Video of that match can be seen here: http://www.judovision.org/?p=1263

Interesting - thanks. Nasty accident.

In the 1904 'Textbook of Ju-Jutsu' it is called kugi-nuki - lit 'the pincers' :